‘Hollywood, inde cinema reduced Bollywood viewers’

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) Today’s audiences are not dependent on movies and have a number of other options like Hollywood and independent cinema for entertainment resulting in Bollywood not having grown in 2015 by its benchmark of films in the Rs.100 crore club, an expert said on Friday.

“The audience is not dependent on movies for entertainment, they have become smart with the awareness about Hollywood movies and independent cinema,” said Radhika Goel of KPMG Media and Entertainment in a session on Framework for Art and Cinema Statistics at an international workshop on Art and cinema indusries in India: Norms, workers and territories organised by the Institut Francais de Inde.

“In the last year, according to the benchmark that we had set for ourselves, that is the (Rs.) hundred crore club which we keep talking about (when) we look at the number of movies in 2015, just six movies have entered this club whereas in 2014, nine movies were a part of this club,” she said.

Goel appreciated the growth of the regional cinema in India saying, “it is picking up and growing. The number of films in the regional cinema is much higher than the Hindi cinema.”

“When a Hollywood movie enters India, it is dubbed not only in Hindi but also in regional languages. This way, they are able to grab the attention of maximum audience”, she stated. “Why we don’t try to do the same thing with Hindi movies?”

Goel also talked about the television rights saying that five years back, the production houses were very confident about the star cast but now “the television players have also realised that the premium which they pay are not generated in rupees”.

“They have started withdrawing themselves because of the lack of viwership, because of the strong pipeline like having famous actors like Salman Khan or a big production house. They buy the rights at cheap rates and then dub the movies to earn profits,” she added.